Quotes by John Hart

Art may imitate wild nature; less often does it dare to place itself in the midst of it, and when it does, it may come out second best.
– John Hart
Art, after all, is traditionally displayed against vacancies: paintings on dun walls, sculptures in empty spaces, music in quiet halls.
– John Hart
For a century now artists have been accustomed to pushing outward the boundaries of what's called art, delighting in the squeals of people whose expectations are violated. But the old fun is gone. the conservatives, by and large, have given up the game.
– John Hart
If the highest beauty requires both prettiness and harshness, perfection and discord, this place is sublimely beautiful.
– John Hart
Say Farallon and I hear an instant music, a kind of animal ocean-noise, built mainly of gull cries and sea lion barkings. Every gull is saying Mine! Mine! Mine!, but the lions sometimes seem to be sounding off for the sheer pleasure of it.
– John Hart
Southeast Farallon will cure you of any notion of nature as pastoral. It's serious, deadly, full-time business here, none of it laid on for our amusement. That such a place should nonetheless be beautiful to us is one of the mysteries of evolution.
– John Hart
What is beauty, or our sense of beauty, for? Where did it come from? Is it some accidental off-flowering from sex? Was the lion I saw swimming alone up and down an inlet, parting its sleek dark head to bark and bark and bark, feeling something we might recognize as an aesthetic zest?
– John Hart